Monday, August 27, 2007
Five minutes with some guy
The dumbest pose ever lives. It's sort of the "Hahaha, I'm more important than you, stupid reader, which is why you're below me. Look at this building in the background. I'm vaguely involved with it! Well, strictly speaking, this is Sproul Hall, and Eshleman probably would've been more appropriate, but these columns look so much better than Eshleman's walls" thing.
The Daily Californian: What are some of your goals for the president’s office for the coming year?
Van Nguyen: So I think the first goal, and one of the things I'm going to work on the most, is to build a trust of the students back into the ASUC. Haha! I'm going to say turnout doesn't break 35% next election. I guess one could argue low turnout means that people "trust" the ASUC enough to not want to meddle through the silly voting process, though.
I think the second thing that I'd like to work on is to show students that the ASUC can make a significant difference on this campus more so than simply putting on projects, but also a significant difference in the student life here on campus and making sure that students feel included and welcomed to this huge university. Wouldn't accomplishing those things be "simply putting on projects"? Come on, don't mince words. Say "more so than simply putting on useless projects that don't accomplish anything, like those that Student Action losers live on." We know that's what you're thinking.
I think another thing that is critical for all students on this campus is lowering student fees. Yeah, that's sort of an important thing to tag on to the end of that list. (this isn't necessarily Van's fault, since this is a Daily Cal interview)
DC: And how are you going to go about lowering the fees?
VN: We need to build student power through the electoral process and make sure that we have the power to elect representatives that understand our needs and will not vote to increase student fees, but will vote to invest more in UC education.... Single issue voting? From students? "Yeah, lower fees is important, so I'm going to use the democratic process to demand that legislators vote my way. That process will probably take years, and I'll be out of college by the time I see any benefits. But sure, I'll do single issue voting on the topic! Our representatives who all have completely safe districts will definitely be threatened by the possibility of us students voting against them."
We need to build relationships with UC Regents which we haven't had before ... to make sure that the UC Regents know us, they know the issues of the UC Berkeley students and they understand that it's not acceptable to increase student fees when there's a budget crisis in the state of California. The way this is written suggests that student fees should only be increased when California is in a good financial position. (Does this ever happen? I can't recall a time when California wasn't in a "budget crisis." I haven't been here very long, though.)
Tip: Withdraw from the UCSA. Everyone knows that getting things done in the California legislature involves buying stuff for Don Perata. If the UCSA isn't going to do that, we're going to need someone who can. Also keep in mind that if the UCSA doesn't speak for all students (i.e. if we pull out), then we can get direct access to the Regents, rather than having to go through the UCSA.
Update: Some anonymous dude explains how this works in practice:
Back in the 90's when Davis and ASUC pulled out of UCSA they were both given their own Whiteliners (people who are allowed enter the Regent's side of the Regents meetings and talk with them when they aren't at the table. Currently only UCSA has control over who can be a Whiteliner)
. . .
|
. . .
|
